


Gone, Not Gone

by dyrimthespeaker



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 23:59:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17334833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dyrimthespeaker/pseuds/dyrimthespeaker
Summary: It’s hard when the only person you want to talk to is dead. Harder still when being dead doesn’t mean they’re wholly gone.





	Gone, Not Gone

**Author's Note:**

> I love to cry about the twins! I will continue to cry about them! I will not be stopped!
> 
> Thanks to Shreya for listening to me cry about said twins!

It wasn’t something he started doing right away. It took a while to get into a routine. There was so much going on after Nellie died, after Dad died. The funerals themselves were enough, but add in all the shit with the house, with Mom, the fact that Luke himself died and came back.

The hospital, mourning, trying to figure out what came next. It took time to figure out, especially now that he had to do it without Nellie. He couldn’t turn to her to ask her opinion, seek her advice the way he always had. He didn’t always take it, but he always asked. He felt untethered without her, didn’t know how to move on.

Early on he’d call her cell phone and wait for the voicemail, hearing her voice like a soothing balm on his nerves. He’d leave her a message and it would almost be like she just missed his call, but she’d get the message and return it. She couldn’t, of course. But that didn’t stop the weird little blossom of hope in Luke’s gut every time he’d hear her cheerfully inform him that she couldn’t come to the phone, but he could leave a message and she’d call him back.

She never did.

It wasn’t as bad as the headlights with Mom. He wasn’t six years old, confused and unable to comprehend death. He wasn’t tricking himself into false hope of a return that would never come. But it still hurt. That little flame of hope igniting in that child part of his brain that said  _ It’s her voice! Dead people don’t talk!  _ But dead people do talk. They talk in old movies, songs from other eras, recordings of times and people long passed. They talk in old voicemails, ready to take messages that would never be answered.

They talk in dreams and in memories. And sometimes, they even talk to you.

Squaring what was and wasn’t real after the house was both simple and complicated. Getting answers he’d been searching his whole life for made so many things click into place, but at the same time being told he’d been right after so long of being told he was making everything up made him feel lost. The validation and belief he’d been begging for but had withheld from him, once he had it he didn’t know what to do with it. To find out all of those fragmented memories were real, not dreams, not delusions. It was too much to take in all at once.

Nellie was dead, Dad was dead, and he’d never been crazy.

Or at least, not in the ways he’d been told he was. He was still pretty sure he was crazy. Depressed addict. He knew that. But he wasn’t  _ crazy  _ crazy. Not crazy like everyone had said he and Nellie and Mom were.

It almost made him question reality more than before. When he’d been insisting he was right and no one believed him. Now they believed him and it made it feel like maybe he was making things up. And wasn’t that crazy?

So he’d call her cell phone, just to hear her voice. Just to leave her a message she’d never answer.

Then her phone got cut off. It made sense, she wasn’t alive, she wasn’t paying her bill. But it filled him with irrational dread when he got the robotic voice telling him the number was disconnected instead of Nellie’s cheerful lament at having missed the call. He’d fumbled in a cold sweat to bring up Shirley’s number thinking that if anyone would know Nellie’s phone provider it would be her.

He’d been right and tuned out through most of her gentle lecture about what happens to people’s bills and accounts after they die. He could hear in her tone of voice that she was trying to ease him through something, but all he wanted was the account information, he could reopen it and figure out a way to pay for it.

By the time he had everything he needed and stumbled into the nearest provider location he knew he looked like a mess, but he didn’t care. Just reopen the account, turn the voicemail back on. Just so he could hear her voice.

The clerk patiently informed him that unfortunately the number had already been reassigned, but if he wanted a new account they would be happy to help. He knew he was stumbling over his words trying to insist that  _ no, no, that was Nellie’s number _ until he could see the discomfort in the clerk’s eyes and posture, the other customers giving him a clear berth.

He wasn’t yelling, but he was definitely creating some type of scene. The absurdity and the grief and the despair all caught up in him and he burst into tears right there in the middle of the store. That, of course, only increased everyone’s discomfort and what had been a wide berth was now like a quarantine zone, no one daring to step any closer. He managed to sob out some kind of explanation that the number was his dead sister’s along with copious apologies for being. Whatever it was he was being. A mess. Before he turned and left, unable to salvage any appearance of being a rational person going about his day, but at least able to leave and get some space and privacy to have his breakdown.

The despair only got worse and was joined by regret and shame as he remembered all the phones he’d had and sold for cash, sold for drugs. Sold off every precious message she’d left him for a fix. He hadn’t known it at the time, the idea that he’d never hear her voice again absurd. That she would die was unthinkable. But it had happened and he’d scattered those recordings until they were long gone.

It had been an act of desperation that led him to calling Steve. He was so overwhelmed in the loss and self loathing, trying to salvage any last scrap of hope he could find. He didn’t know why he latched onto the voicemails as imperative, all he knew was he felt an overwhelming and single minded need. He had to find out if there was any way to save even one.

He didn’t want to call Shirley again, she had already been hesitant enough the first time, trying to talk him through Nellie’s phone being cut off. He feared Theo would try to psychoanalyze him, say that what he was doing was unhealthy and refuse to help. So he turned to Steve. Steve seemed like he might be willing to help, Steve was always better with help he could provide when it was a more concrete task. Something specific he could do.

The call started fairly hopelessly, Steve saying that after all this time it was unlikely any of Luke’s old providers wouldn’t have deleted the data, though they could still try it. But then he’d paused and Luke had let himself hope.

_ “Didn’t you used to be on Shirley’s family plan? Back when you lived in her guest house?” _

_ “Yeah.” _

_ “Shirley hasn’t changed her number so that account’s still active even if your line is closed. We could see if something could be retrieved there.” _

Shirley did still have the same number and, after looking into it, found that at least some stuff from Luke’s old phone was still backed up to her family’s cloud. She promised to get whatever she could and save the files and send them to Luke.

Which was how he ended up with exactly three voicemails Nellie had left him years ago. They were precious and he made sure to save copies, determined that this was a piece of her he’d never lose. He’d already come too close, he wouldn’t risk it. Steve and Shirley both seemed to understand that desire to save what pieces of her they had. Like photographs and home movies. Voicemails fell into the same category.

He didn’t mention that he wanted to talk to her.

The salvaged voicemails were important and he was glad to have been spurred into action and saved them, but they were complete messages unto themselves. They weren’t a dialogue and they didn’t feel the same as calling her number. He couldn’t play one and then just start talking, it didn’t make sense. It didn’t feel right.

Mumbling like Dad didn’t feel right either, seemed a little too crazy. Not that calling your dead sister’s voicemail was the most sane and rational thing. But it could be passed off way more easily than audibly talking to no one. It also reminded him too much of talking to himself when he felt like he was being followed by things from the house. Mumbling  _ it’s not real _ under his breath.

That’s not to say he didn’t try it. He did. But it made him wildly self conscious. Like he was having a clandestine meeting and might be caught out any moment. He couldn’t focus on what he wanted to say when he felt like he had to keep looking over his shoulder for fear of being caught. It made him more anxious, not less. It wasn’t what he was looking for.

He still remembered how his siblings had reacted when they first noticed Dad talking to Mom. He didn’t want to give them any more reason to turn their eyes to scrutinize him. He’d done plenty that they watched him for, he didn’t need to add another thing to the list.

But he did need to talk to her, somehow, some way.

He saw her sometimes. Not for long, never for long. Blink and you’d miss it. Sometimes she’d stay just long enough to whisper a word or two before she’d disappear, but it was never long enough for a full conversation.

Maybe that was why he was trying to hard so find a way to talk to her. Because she was still there. Maybe if she was gone, properly gone, the way most people are when they die. Maybe then he could grieve and let go, like the way Shirley tried to tell him to. But she wasn’t.

He remembered what she said at the house, about how she wasn’t gone, she was scattered over their lives in so many pieces. He tried to take the time to remember that. To feel raindrops and think of her, just like she said. To find those bits and pieces of her everywhere, in everything, and think of her.

It made things easier and harder. One one hand, he was fairly certain it was the only thing keeping him together. The knowledge that she wasn’t truly gone. That he wasn’t alone. He didn’t know how he would handle that, truly being alone and without her.

But it also made it harder. To know she was there, but trapped, out of reach. Stuck in that house and unable to be called. It wasn’t like she was still around to talk to or even feel the way he used to. The way he had his entire life.

Schrödinger’s absence. Gone, not gone.

The temptation to visit her was strong, but he knew better than to go back to the house. He’d barely made it out alive last time, he shouldn’t tempt fate twice.

Even if he wanted to.

He felt her presence more than he saw her. It wasn’t quite the same as it had been before she died, he felt her, but it was… different. She was dead so nothing was really happening to her, nothing for him to feel other than cold and stiff. Which, realizing  _ that  _ was what he’d been feeling the day she died and Steve found him on the street was enough to send him into a full blown panic attack and subsequent breakdown that he barely got through without using.

He felt her presence during it and that’s what gave him the strength to push through, to stay clean. To honor the promise he made her when she drove him to rehab the last time, that this was it.

And it was. He’d kept that promise.

Every time he felt her there with him he knew she’d be glad, she’d be proud.

Usually when he felt her with him it was like she was standing in the room with him, just out of sight. Like he had his back to her, but she was there, just silently passing the time. It felt a lot like when they were teenagers and would sit in her room together, not speaking, just being. The feeling was soothing, to know he wasn’t alone. Even if he couldn’t visit her and speak to her and  _ feel  _ her the way he used to.

It was an accident, the way he finally figured out a way to talk to her that felt right. A while after the voicemail incident, when he’d just about given up on figuring out a way that didn’t make him feel blatantly crazy. He was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, had just finished shaving, when he felt her. Like she was standing behind him, at the wrong angle to be seen, but there. Turning around would shatter the illusion that she was there in the flesh, so he stayed still. Looked at the mirror. Not at himself, just at the mirror.

“Hey Nellie,” he said softly.

And it felt right. The mirror offering some kind of illusion, connection, that just talking to an empty room didn’t. He wasn’t sure why, but pretending she was just out of frame worked. Made it feel almost like it felt when he called her cell phone. It wasn’t quite the same, he couldn’t hear her voice, but it felt natural. Look in a mirror, don’t make eye contact with himself, and talk.

He told her everything.

The good, the bad, the mundane. When he was panicking or sad, when he was happy, any little bit of news he had that he thought she’d want to know. He’d find a mirror and some privacy and tell her about it.

He couldn’t prove that she heard him, but he felt like she did. It’s why he liked the mirror. Something about it made it feel like she could hear him, that even if she couldn’t respond, she knew.

She knew and she heard him. She knew and she was there, as there as she could be. She knew and she was a lifeline, even now, even in death.

So he’d stand in front of a mirror and talk.

Talk about his life, his feelings. Talk about how much he missed her. Talk about things he thought she’d like to hear. What he was doing, what their siblings were doing. Little updates on the goings on of their family. Talk about his struggles, talk about his sobriety, talk about the new life he was building for himself.

Even though she didn’t respond, couldn’t respond. He knew she heard him.

And that was enough.


End file.
